Tag: Strategy

[Communications Report] for September 17th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

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  • Seven ways social nets like Facebook and LinkedIn are ‘truly evil’ – Something to keep in mind…
  • How to Unleash Your Human Potential | Fast Company – Allow your workers to experiment, and make their goal to please the customer–not the boss.
  • The Science of Retweets on Twitter – One of the most actively discussed aspects of Twitter is the art and science of retweets. Retweets, in my opinion, are one of the most sincere forms of recognition and validation, empowering users to pay it forward through the recognition of noteworthy content
  • American Express launches interactive campaign with Mark Ronson – The interactive campaign will be hosted at www.channel4.com/mylivestory, and will encourage consumers to celebrate their most memorable live music moments by submitting photos or videos of their favourite gig online.
  • Crowdmap – Collect news, aggregate and visualize on a map. Crowdmap is designed and built by the people behind Ushahidi, a platform that was originally built to crowdsource crisis information. As the platform has evolved, so have its uses. Crowdmap allows you to set up your own deployment of Ushahidi without having to install it on your own web server.
  • Developer Release – This is now a community project and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who shares the vision of a social network that puts users in control.
  • Don’t Think of It As Piracy, Think of It As Marketing – Most video-game developers — along with most musicians, writers, movie producers and virtually every other kind of content creator — see digital piracy as an enemy to be fought with every weapon at their disposal. Not Markus Persson. While the Swedish developer of the indie game Minecraft says he isn’t happy about people copying his game illegally, he sees it as a necessary part of doing business in a digital world
  • Facebook Creates Multiple Account Dashboard for Advertisers – As Facebook becomes more of a force in the online advertising space, it has to also step up to the plate with analytics and reporting.
  • “The Social Network” Interactive Trailer Is All Up in Your Facebook – Anticipation is rising for the October 1 debut of The Social Network, the film that explores the history of Facebook and how it was founded. With just two weeks left before its debut in theaters, the film is launching its interactive trailer, chock-full of Facebook-y goodness.
  • Google’s troubles recruiting and retaining | Econsultancy – Recruiting and retaining ‘the best and brightest’ is the goal of most companies, and that explains why, for most companies, doing so is a tough job.
  • The Colors of the Web’s Superbrands [INFOGRAPHIC] – What colors do the web’s most powerful brands use to distinguish themselves from others? The folks from COLOURlovers decided to find out…
  • Levi’s launches online fitting service for women – Brand Republic News – The new digital offering is based on the figures of 60,000 women worldwide, and is meant to be a step towards ending the frustrations in the “search for a perfect fit”, according to Levi’s.
  • Top 3 Reasons Traditional Marketing Will Fail – Traditional marketing methods and overall approach will undoubtedly fail in today’s communications climate.
  • Twittelp.com | Help in the blink of a tweet. – Twittelp is a mobile application that provides to its users a quick way to ask help on the twittersphere. Every of your follower will be able to see that you need them, moreover you can define up to 5 follower (suggest your best friends or familiar) that will be mentioned inside the help request. (Thanks to Giuliano Iacobelli)
  • BBC News – What your social network profile picture really says – Nina started a Facebook page for her experiment, gathering over 3,500 members, who shared their reasons for choosing their profile pictures…
  • The Desert of Community Building | Geoff Livingston’s Blog – It’s important not to deceive one’s self about the significant effort and time one will invest to build a community, and then continue to invest in order to sustain it. The Fifth Estate requires continued interactions…The time and human resource commitments are real and significant. Have the patience to see it through, from start to finish, and the deserts that lie between moments of great interaction. Knowing this from the start helps.
  • 5 Compelling Reasons to Readjust Your Information Diet, and How to Do It – “One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.” Marshall McLuhan
  • The Implications of Consumers Spending More Time with Facebook Than Google | Forrester Blogs – The difference between the two companies is that Facebook has a unified offering that people find compelling, while Google has a collection of sites that people find very useful–Google search, Gmail, YouTube, Google News and the other Google destinations are largely separate consumer experiences. This is a problem, and the solution may be Google Me, the rumored and expected social offering from Google.
  • Q2 2010 State of Social Meda Sponsorships – Good stats.
  • Seven Important Social Media Trends For The Next Year – Social media changes from month to month. Trends come and go quicker than the seasons change. Having said that…it should be an exiting year ahead in social media and these should be seven of the main trends…
  • YouTube Starts Testing New Live Streaming Platform – YouTube has announced it will start a two-day trial of their new streaming platform, which enables broadcasters to stream live video directly into YouTube channels.
  • How Newspapers Should Embrace Social Media – Some of the opportunities for socialised news or newspapers.
  • 30 Awesome B2B Social Media Resources – Marketers are currently in a state of transition. As social media and online marketing are integrated with traditional marketing channels, marketing teams need to learn more about the nuts and bolts of B2B social media. This list is designed to help marketers fill in the gap as well as provide resources for those in all phases of the B2B social media adoption process.
  • TubeMogul: People Watch Facebook Videos Longer, And Click On More Ads – On average, people who click on a video from Facebook are more engaged. They tend to watch longer than viewers who arrive from other sources— 1:45 minutes per view versus !:32 for Google (Twitter users are almost the same with 1:44 minutes per view). Roughly 40 percent of Facebook video ads, give or take, are watched all the way through across different video ad types. On the Web in general, video ad completion rates hover around 25 percent.

[Communications Report] for September 1st 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

  • What People Think of the Ad/PR Biz | Reuters – One-third of respondents voiced a positive view of the advertising/pr industry (6 percent “very,” 27 percent “somewhat.”) Twenty-seven percent were “neutral.” Twenty-five percent expressed a “somewhat negative view,” while 11 percent were “very negative.” (The rest didn’t venture an opinion.) The numbers aren’t significantly different from those yielded by last summer’s edition of this annual survey.
  • Is it time for a Chief Social Media Officer? | ZDNet – The role may not be prominent now, but it will happen.
  • New report on “The State of Mobile Communications” – Now is the perfect time for businesses to jump into mobile communications, says “The State of Mobile Communications,” a newly issued report by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Integrated Communications. The report provides recommendations based on the implications of a range of key mobile research reports.
  • 5 Tips to Maintain Social Media Momentum – Servant of Chaos – One of the challenges with social media is that it’s easy to start and it’s easy to stop.
  • The UK’s media consumption habits – Ofcom released its seventh annual communications market report last week. Its a goldmine of information about media consumption habits in the UK and is worth reading in full, the internet section in particular.
  • Facebook Usage Still Rising in Europe, but UK Growth Slows – eMarketer – The Facebook juggernaut rolls on in Europe, but the first sign of declining growth rates has appeared. In particular, the site’s meteoric expansion in the UK is tailing off.
  • Skype Etiquette – Some good tips to keep in mind when using Skype by Michael Arrington
  • Pre-recorded TV viewers cut out ads – The increasing use of digital television recording devices means fewer viewers will watch advertisements. Online video adverts have failed to make an impact on consumers with only 3% citing them as the kind of ad they were most likely to pay attention to.
  • Want an SEO job? Check out the Daily Mail’s robots.txt file … – This is actually a great idea!
  • 10 Tips For Aspiring Community Managers – Tips from community builders on what it takes to land a job and be effective at cultivating community.
  • The Value of a Social Media Fan….Priceless – CPM models are generally used to price traditional media ads which represent only a monologue selling a specific product and are not customized to measuring the overall value of social media. Facebook “impressions” are a completely different kind of media where more often than not, the post should be as divorced as possible from trying to make a sale and are more about creating dialogue, brand awareness and positive social conversation which indirectly leads to higher sales.
  • Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch – After a tough 2009, advertisers are expected to increase mobile and digital marketing budgets over the next year. With this in mind, it’s essential that advertisers keep up-to-date on their options in the mobile space. Here, we’ve laid out five mobile advertising trends to watch over the coming year.
  • Infographic: The Geosocial Universe – This infographic, created by Jesse Thomas of digital creative agency Jess3, shows the relative size of social networks and online services such as Skype, Gmail, MySpace, Twitter and Foursquare, and also shows the proportion of their user base that access the service via a mobile device.
  • How to Handle an Employee’s Controversial Online Comment – Stuff just happens. In most situations, though, the most important factor is how the situation is handled.
  • 5 Items to Delete From Your Website Today – When we add ideas and actions, websites become more complicated. Complication creates confusion and often translates to lower effectiveness.
  • Youtube stars making 100000 plus per year: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance – There are 10 independent YouTube stars who made over $100,000 in the past year, according to a study done by analytics and advertising company TubeMogul.
  • 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now – What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.

[Communications Report] for July 29th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

[Communications Report] for June 28th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

  • 5 Tools to Track Twitter Trends – On any given day there are over 600 tweets per second on Twitter for a total of over 50 million tweets per day. With an overload of tweets daily it can be difficult to grasp what is really trending at any given moment. Use the tools below to quickly find current Twitter trends and trending conversations.
  • Social Media Measurement Should Focus on Outcomes, Not Output – It’s not about simply looking for opportunities to drop messaging into ordinary conversation, but about finding shared interests, shared benefits and shared rewards for others in the communities where your brand interacts.
  • 8 Steps to Creating a Brand Persona – In social networks, the brand and how it’s perceived, is open to public interpretation and potential misconception now more than ever. Without a deliberate separation between the brand voice and personality and that of the person representing it, we are instantly at odds with our goals, purpose, and potential stature.
  • Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks – The phone management app is great, but even cooler hacks exist just under the hood.
  • How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload – Useful productivity tips.
  • 15 more awesome social media infographics – Infographics that demonstrate a mixture of both hard data and strategy practices. Hopefully, they’ll also provide some inspiration or can be useful in helping you with presentations or pitches. As before, links to the actual graphics are in the headline titles.
  • 6 ways to find value in Twitter’s noise – A great example that shows how we can get insights from analyzing Twitter data.
  • Social Media is the 3rd Era of the Web [graph] – A search that compares the world wide search volume on Google for new media, web 2.0, and social media. What the graph shows is that we’re at an inflection point in the language we use to describe the macro trends of innovation on the web…it’s the indicator that we’re in the 3rd Era of the Web and it’s The Era of Social Media.
  • How The World Spends Its Time Online [infographic] – Millions of people across the world are constantly connected by the internet. Here’s a look at what everybody’s doing when they’re in front of their computer screen.
  • Is Social a Source for B2B Leads? – Terrific insights about B2B site visitors referred from social media.
  • Diesel Cam – Interactive installation at Diesel Stores in Spain, being the first store that allows users to share the moment of buying and trying garments on their Facebook profiles from the store. Consumers are able to make pictures, publish them and boast their new acquisitions with their Facebook friends.
  • The Fun Theory – A great Volkswagen initiative. #engagement
  • Teens and Their Mobile Phones / Flowtown – Have you ever wondered what teens were really using their mobile phones for? A recent study released by Pew Internet Research has shed light on average mobile
  • Public Media Joins Forces for One Big Platform – The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself — to build apps, stations, websites and other media services combining audio, text and video content from every public radio and television outlet in the country.

Online Personal Marketing Strategy

Few weeks ago I was in Rome with my ‘Get the Best Out of Twitter‘ for the Ignite Italia -O’Reilly. Among the people I met at the event there was also Robin Good. Inspired by my presentation he decided to invite me for a nice walk at the Villa Borghese park and record a video interview focusing on:

  • What steps do you need to take to create a valuable online service or business
  • What’s the strategic approach that an individual can follow to create value, authority, credibility and the opportunity to make business online

Video highlights below. Enjoy it!

@Robin: Thanks for the great time, it was nice to see you again! 🙂

Andrea

Video highlights:

Anyone can do what she/he wants for a living

There is one thing that everybody should keep in mind. Nowadays, more than ever before, everyone has a chance of doing what he or she loves for a living.

Going Global

Why? Because we are going global. With a simple blog and few clicks you have the chance of connecting with the entire world. It’s definitely interesting period the one we are living in.

Being Passionate

At the base, before focusing on technology, it’s important to be really passionate about what you are doing. I see way too many people who are unsatisfied with their jobs, and I can’t stand that. Maybe it’s because I am an entrepreneur. I really do what I love. I love my job. That is what I am really passionate about in my life and I think everyone has some passions. I think they should go for it. Online you are instantly connected with the entire world. You will find other people that have your same passions becoming your target audience, whether you do it for business or not.

What you do doesn’t have to be necessarily related to business (it could non-profit etc.) but let’s say that you have the possibility of finding a place to express yourself. Usually, if something is done with passion, you have that drive to go on that usually other people do not have. It’s not going to be easy. Every time you do something, you will find roadblocks. Ultimately, passion is the drive that makes you go on. Nothing really starts or works in first place if you do not really want it badly.

Start By Listening

First thing you should do is to start by listening a little bit what’s going on and understanding who is already out there. Let’s say you want to start your own small business. You should carefully listen to which are the other players in your field and to understand in which environment you will have to move, because sometimes it will happen… you won’t be the first. You definitely have to pay attention to them, and then of course build a presence on the web that express your strategic communications plan. It doesn’t have to be just ‘a blog’, your online presence is going to be the gate between you and the world or your target audience, so it has to be done really carefully.

Jump Into The Conversation

After that, you can start to jump into the conversation that is happening out there – I do not want to say “join” the conversation, because I am sick of hearing it. Everyone is talking about “joining the conversation” and just few people actually do it. Anyway… you have to start to jump into that, where the conversation is already happening, with your audience, with people within your niche. After that, when you establish a basic connection with this environment that is out there, then you can start to be proactive.

Build Trust, Engage Deeper

Once the trust is built, then you can start to engage at a deeper level and eventually this will translate into business. It could also be just for a passion or for the organization you are working for. It just depends on which is your focus and what are your objectives.

When Does The Money Show Up?

The money comes after you establish a real connection with your audience, after your target audience trusts you. The money will come after, as a consequence.

I tell you an example.

Every time I go to Venice – I come from Venice region in Italy – I go to the market on Friday morning. I go there and buy some good fresh fish. There are tons of people that are selling fish, but I always go to the same lady. There is no way I can go and buy fish from anyone else, because I bought fish from her for years.

How she convinced me at first?

  • observing the crowd and stopping me when she noticed that I need some fish,
  • showing me the really good fish she had,
  • why would have been better to buy from her and not from others,
  • giving me good tips on how to cook fish, and so on.

She established a real emotional connection, so I trusted her and I became her client.

You can basically do the same online. At that point – after you have built all these connections – is where the money is going to come. It’s going to be a consequence.

Word of Mouth

Another important thing is what you call in Italian “il passaparola“, the power of word of mouth. Happy clients will talk to other potential clients and they will bring them to you. It’s going to be also your community that will help you and your business grow.

The Trust Circle

What is it?
Relationships that people have on the web can be described with concentric circles. The innermost represents the people we trust the most, our closest friends. When we start to move out from that close group of people, our trust starts to fade away until we reach the point in which we start to rely more on the opinions of ‘experts’ or more authoritative and recognized voices in that space.

Update based on comments: Existence of multiple groups of circles around each individual. Each one of these groups is dedicated to a specific niche (professional, personal life, etc.). Although certain contacts can be present on different groups, according to the niche we are looking at they can have a different level of influence/trust.

Why it’s important?
The understanding of the trust circle dynamics can offer great positioning advantages for brands, strategists and other communications practitioners. Understand where you are standing or where you should eventually be helps the listening process, the engagement, the acquisition, the support and the retention of your target audience.

Take this as a conversation starter. What would you add to it? What’s your take?

I’d love to hear your thoughts here in the comments or via twitter @vascellari (remember to link to this post!).

Andrea

[video] Branding Today – Keynote Shift Conference

Episode: VMC #223 – Branding Today – Keynote Shift Conference

This is the keynote I delivered today at the Shift Conference in Lisbon (Portugal).

The effective promotion of a brand, especially when you ‘do it yourself’ is about the understanding of the new environment in which we operate, the new technologies at our disposal and the way people want to be approached today. The understanding of these three points is fundamental but it doesn’t have to drive our attention away from the brand itself and from the essential aspects that make a brand unique and worthy of attention. Often times people get too caught up in the promotion of a brand without giving the proper attention to what that brand represents overall. The desire to “put stuff out there as fast as possible” without a strategic plan keeping a brand’s fundamental values at the forefront of a promotional campaign is detrimental to the successful marketing of that brand.

Enjoy it! (video and slides below)

Andrea

Branding Today

[Communications Report] for March 22nd 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

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Flip the Funnel – Book Launch

Episode: VMC #219 – Flip the Funnel – Book Launch

“Retention can become the new acquisition” Joseph Jaffe

Last week Joseph Jaffe officially launched his new book ‘Flip The Funnel‘ at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York. I had the chance of having a glass of wine with Joseph a few days before, during social media week. We had a nice chat and he gave me a few insights and a copy of the book with a special note… (Thank you Joseph).

Nope, this is not a sponsored post. I chose to blog about it because I’m more than happy to share with you the inspiring thoughts of a great marketer and a good friend. I’ll review the book so stay tuned.

Andrea

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